


No Ballad Will Be Written

by adiduck (book_people)



Series: No Choir [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Beru Whitesun and Luke Skywalker are the only fully functional members of this family, CC-2224 | Cody Needs a Hug, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Injury Recovery, Kid Fic, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, Owen Lars is very tired, Post-Order 66, These two desperately need to communicate, This fic is definitely... on the more melancholy side
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:15:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25473730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/book_people/pseuds/adiduck
Summary: “I don’t want to put you out,” Ben hedged, because he was apparently no longer capable of accepting anything to his own benefit.“Don’t be ridiculous, Kenobi,” Owen said, and so they went in the speeder, Cody’s armor carefully tied up in a spare blanket Beru had and set in a parcel on Cody’s lap for the ride.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody & Luke Skywalker, CC-2224 | Cody & Obi-Wan Kenobi, CC-2224 | Cody & Owen Lars & Beru Whitesun, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Owen Lars & Beru Whitesun, Owen Lars & Luke Skywalker & Beru Whitesun, Owen Lars/Beru Whitesun
Series: No Choir [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1844878
Comments: 41
Kudos: 377





	No Ballad Will Be Written

It took another few days before the stormtrooper--Cody, Owen discovered that first night, when Ben Kenobi showed up at his door with the man torn and feverish in his arms in the  _ middle of a sandstorm _ ; his name was Cody--was well enough to be moved, and even then they wouldn’t have made it on foot. Owen, who wanted them out of his living room as much as Ben obviously wanted to take Cody and go, offered to take them in his land speeder himself.

“I don’t want to put you out,” Ben hedged, because he was apparently no longer capable of accepting anything to his own benefit.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Kenobi,” Owen said, and so they went in the speeder, Cody’s armor carefully tied up in a spare blanket Beru had and set in a parcel on Cody’s lap for the ride. The three of them sat in silence the whole way, Cody dozing in the back seat as horizontal as he could manage, and Owen and Ben very predictably finding nothing to say to each other through the entirety of the Jundland Wastes.

“Do you need anything to get by while he’s still healing,” Owen asked finally, as they crested a rise and Ben’s sad little hut came into view.

“We’ll be fine,” Ben said, and Owen gave him a look that he packed full of silent judgement, but didn’t verbally contradict him. Owen, after all, had  _ seen  _ the inside of Ben’s hut. It was--well. It was what it looked like it was from the outside.

Unsurprisingly, Ben ignored him, like he always did. The man was apparently convinced he was doing just fine out here on his own, and considering he’d managed to survive a remarkable four and a half years this way, Owen didn’t have the hard evidence to contradict him.

“Let me help you get him inside,” Owen finally said, internally sighing, and got out of the speeder.

Cody had managed to fall deeply enough asleep that it took him a moment to realize they were stopped, sleepy to alert and  _ alarmed  _ in the time it took him to open his eyes and realize he didn’t recognize his surroundings, hand going to a blaster that was not at his belt. Then he blinked, lips thinning as he focused on Obi-Wan and Owen. “Apologies,” he said, voice hoarse, and cleared his throat.

“You’re alright,” Owen said, genuinely unbothered, and reached out at the same time Ben did when Cody levered himself to his feet, froze with a very small narrowing of his eyes before they could actually catch him. Owen froze himself, hand hovering just over the other man’s shoulder, and then dropped his hand.

Of course, Ben’s former Clone Commander would be just as self-destructively stubborn as Ben Kenobi was. Naturally. Owen certainly must have done something to deserve to be in this position, but he genuinely had no idea what.

Cody waited where he stood until Ben withdrew his hand as well, and then stepped off the speeder himself, only a little too heavily, blanket with his armor slung over a shoulder as he walked up to the door. Ben sighed, and then hurried to catch up, getting to the door first to open it. Cody passed through, face carefully blank, and then paused in the doorway as he caught sight of Ben’s living arrangements for the first time.

Owen wasn’t entirely sure--stormtrooper body language was notoriously hard to read, regimented; they must have been trained to all hold themselves the exact same way--but he thought the set of Cody’s shoulders and line of his back might have been indicating dubiousness. Owen let himself be amused, and trudged up behind them.

“I realize it will be a bit of a squeeze,” Ben started, carefully, as Owen reached them. Ben was standing directly in the door, of course. Four and a half years on Tatooine, and he still forgot things that struck Owen as indescribably rude, like leaving a guest you’d invited on your front porch in the heat of the day. Owen’s mouth thinned, but didn’t interrupt, let them finish whatever it was they were doing. From here, he could see as Cody shook his head as though waking, and sighed the sigh of the deeply exhausted.

“I've certainly bunked down in worse, sir, and closer quarters. Where do you want me?”

Ben stiffened. “You needn’t stand on formality, Cody, I’ve told you,” he said, and it came out clipped, as it increasingly had any time Cody used a term that referenced Obi-Wan Kenobi’s military career. Ben was emphatically not a fan of that, as Owen and Beru had learned in the last nearly half a decade. Cody, it seemed, either kept forgetting or could genuinely care less. “I’m hardly a general anymore.”

Cody glanced at Ben out of the corner of his eye, and his mouth thinned, as it had done every time they’d started this argument over the last week. Point for option two, then.

Ben sighed, and apparently let it go for the time being. Again. “You’re welcome to the bed,” he said, and moved into the room. “I’ll be perfectly fine with a few blankets and pillows in the chair for now.”

“Sir,” Cody said, in a tone that managed to be polite and succinct and still carry deep, deep disapproval.

“ _ Commander _ ,” Ben responded, voice abruptly sharp, and Cody flinched.

_ Not a Commander _ , Cody had corrected, the first night, delirious from pain and fever and dehydration and still, still voicing this correction. Owen sighed. This, he could tell, was going to be an interesting homestead, for a time.

The sound got Ben moving, at the very least. Maybe he’d remembered his manners. “Come in, Owen. Can I get you something to drink?” he asked, which meant he had, indeed, remembered there was a protocol to inviting someone into your home in the desert. “Cody, you can lay your armor on the table there, in front of the bed.”

“Thank you,” Owen accepted, and stepped the rest of the way into the hut. It hadn’t changed much since the last time Owen was here. Small, and dusty now that Ben hadn’t been here for nearly a week; the arches holding the roof up and dividing the room were graying from their original cream color, the sparse shelves stocked neatly with a few containers. Ben’s dining table still had plates on it, where he probably hadn’t bothered to clean up before he left for what he thought was a mere day. The bed--the only bed--was made, but visibly lumpy even from the door.

Owen spent a moment contemplating just not addressing that, or the conversation they’d had in front of him, or the fact that Cody was probably only standing perfectly upright and steady through sheer, single-minded stubbornness regarding not taking the only bed of a former commanding officer.

“We’re a bit late to head to Mos Eisley today,” he said, giving in, and moved further into the room. “I have chores I need to get done over the next few days. I can come back around at the end of the ten-day and we can head to town to get a second bed.” He had genuinely no idea where Ben would  _ put  _ it, but that wasn’t actually his concern.

Ben paused where he was pulling things out of the pantry and turned, surprised, as Owen made his way to a chair and sat in it--maybe rude without permission, but this way the stormtrooper in the corner would have one less place to park himself that wasn’t a bed. “You don’t need to--” he started, and Owen reached for the patience not to  _ strangle  _ him.

“How would you get a bed here without a speeder?” he asked.

“I would--”

“You’re family,” Owen said, which, unfortunately, was true, the way the people of Tatooine figured it--Owen’s step-mother’s son’s adopted older brother. Families were vast on Tatooine, and spread out, and still one of the few things that could make a people whose only real priority was survival do anything at all. Ben still hadn’t  _ figured that out _ , and it was one of the many, many things that drove him absolutely  _ crazy  _ about the man.

Ben paused. “I--”

“I’ll be back at the end of the ten-day,” Owen repeated, and glared until the great and power former High General Obi-Wan Kenobi wilted under it, then turned is glare at the--he supposed--now  _ former  _ stormtrooper still standing in the entryway, clutching a parcel of armor to himself like a security blanket. “You should probably lie down before you fall down,” he pointed out.

Cody stared at him for a moment, face blank, and then stepped surprisingly tentatively into the hut to put down his parcel of armor.

Owen sat back, satisfied, and waited for Ben to get on with the hospitality so that he could go back home.

* * *

“Do we have anything spare I can bring over to Kenobi’s at the end of the ten-day?” Owen asked Beru that night. “I have to head back. The man doesn’t have a second bed. We’re going to Mos Eisley.”

Beru put her head in her hands and laughed, loud and long, and Luke--who had been sulking that his new favorite people (and wasn’t  _ that  _ going to be a headache and a half to deal with) were gone, perked up immediately.

“I wanna come and visit Mr. Kenobi and Cody,” he demanded, bouncing. “I found a rock that sparkles like in the flying story! I wanna give it to Cody!”

Luke had spent his spare time in the last week, and much of his time that was  _ not  _ spare despite Owen and Beru’s best efforts, careening between slamming himself into Ben’s legs and demanding he answer all of his questions, and perching himself on the arm of the couch where he is emphatically  _ not allowed to be _ and telling Cody story after story with bright, four-year-old enthusiasm. He’d given Cody three rocks and two pieces of bone as props for these tales that he had somehow found outside and snuck past Beru into what was technically, at the time, a makeshift sick room. Beru had slipped them into the parcel for Cody, last Owen heard.

There was no way he was bringing his excitable, force-sensitive four-year-old on a trip to Mos Eisley for an indeterminate amount of time while they looked for a bed Ben may or may not be able to find.

“We’ll see,” Owen said, and traded a meaningful look with Beru.

“We might have an old bed frame in storage,” Beru suggested. “That would help, at least.”

“Mm,” Owen agreed.

“I wanna go and visit Mr. Kenobi and Cody,” Luke insisted, apparently picking up on the fact that Owen was very firmly opposed.

“We’ll talk about it when it’s closer, dear one,” Beru told him. “It’s days away now.”

Luke’s eyes narrowed, and his lip wobbled dangerously.

Owen, who at this point could recognize an upcoming battle with a toddler when he saw one, sighed. He could already tell it was going to be a long week and a half.

* * *

Luke came with him at the end of the ten-day, but so did Beru, laughing at his futile attempts to convince a four-year-old of anything at all the whole way. “I’ll have him help me find a place to set up the bed frame,” she’d assured, winking at him, and he’d had to kiss her right there, to the musical tones of their child’s disgust.

Still, Luke was very good during the ride to Ben’s hut, cheerfully chattering at them about all the things he was going to tell to Mr. Kenobi and Cody just as soon as he saw them again. Owen was mildly concerned Luke would physically launch himself out of the moving speeder in excitement when the hut cacme into view over the rise, but he didsn’t even do that, just sat there shouting like Ben might hear him even from here, waving and vibrating near out of his seat. When Ben was already standing on the front porch waiting for them as the door came into view, Owen acknowledged he didn't know enough about Ben’s mystical Force powers to know if perhaps he did.

They stopped in front of the hut, and Beru got up and walked around to release the little hellion they were raising from his safety harness prison so he could run full tilt at Ben’s legs and slam into him bodily, as had somehow become their greeting.

“Ow,” Ben said, and then managed to crack a smile. “Hello there, Luke.”

“Hi, Mr. Kenobi,” Luke near-shouted, cheerful and too excited. “I brought Cody a rock!”

“Did you?” Ben asked, and leaned down, for all the world fascinated by this development. “May I see?” Owen and Beru exchanged amused looks and, assured their boy was going to be just fine for the next five minutes, turned to pulling out the bed frame and bedding they’d managed to pack into the speeder.

“He looks tired,” Beru mused, under her breath, as Owen steadied the headboard she was lifting.

“He’s been sleeping in a chair,” Owen dismissed. “Of course he’s tired.”

“Mm,” Beru said, and left him with the footboard and one of the side pieces as she hauled the other, headboard, and bedding over to say hello.

She was absolutely going to meddle there, Owen thought, with fond despair. She was going to meddle, and she was going to expect him to enable her. And, worst part, he absolutely would.

“--didn’t have to go to the trouble,” Ben was--very predictably--insisting as Owen walked up.

“Of course we did,” Beru dismissed. “We had the frame, and we weren’t using it.” Ben looked like he wanted to argue, and then very wisely, visibly chose not to, as Owen reached them to provide Beru with a united front.

“...Well, thank you,” he said, graciously, and accepted the bedding from Beru. “Please, come inside. Can I get you something to drink?”

“Is Cody inside?” Luke interrupted, bouncing.

“He is indeed,” Ben said, and Luke made a bee-line to the door, tugging on the handle and dashing into the cool dark of the hut without even a by-your-leave.

“...A drink would be lovely,” Beru offered, voice very wry, and Ben chuckled.

* * *

Inside the hut was about as much cooler as it looked, though of course, very little else could be said about it. Someone had apparently made an effort to sweep in the last ten-day, so the place was a bit less dusty, and there were no dirty plates obviously sitting on the table. Cody was ensconced in the chair in the sitting area when they walked in, stormtrooper helmet and a rag on one knee while Luke had claimed the other. He was dutifully admiring the rock as Luke chattered at him. Beside him, there were two piles of the rest of the trooper armor. Both piles had clearly already been cleaned, scratched from use but gleaming white. Owen wondered just how many times Cody’d gone over them.

His eyes snapped up when the three of them trundled in, and his shoulders relaxed very little at the sight of them. “Owen, Beru,” he greeted, and clearly started trying to stand up.

“Cody,” Owen greeted back. “Don’t bother, we’ve got these.”

“How have you been?” Beru asked, and smiled at him over the top of the headboard.

“...Fine,” Cody offered back, like he wasn’t sure that was the right answer, and Owen inwardly sighed. Good to know that neither of these two idiots had been spending much time improving over the last while since Owen had inflicted himself and his family on them.

“You do look better,” Beru said, still smiling, and Ben placed the bedding down on the end of the bed.

“Let me get you something to eat and drink,” he offered, voice flat. “Cody, do you want anything?”

“No,” Cody said. “Thank you.”

Ben didn’t flinch, but it was a very near thing. Owen looked to Beru, who looked back, grave.

“ _ Cody _ ,” Luke whined, tugging on Cody’s shirt to get his attention back where it belonged, and Cody looked back down to the four-year-old in his lap.

“Sorry, kid,” he said, with an attempt at a smile. “You were telling me about the new big dune?”

“He keeps tunnelling into it,” Owen offered, leaning on the footrest as the talked. “I’ve had to haul him out every day in the last five days.”

“It’s got treasure,” Luke informed Cody, very very seriously.

“I can tell,” Cody answered back, gravely, because he doesn’t have to haul Luke out of a dune that could collapse at any moment. Owen still didn’t know why he was inflicting this situation on himself.

“Is there somewhere we can put these,” he asked Cody, and gestured to the bed. Cody glanced back at him, and blinked.

“...Anywhere there’s room for it,” he finally said. “You can ask the G--” He cut himself off. The silence stretched. “It’s not my house,” he continued, finally, hand tight on the helmet on his knee.

“ _ Cody _ ,” Luke whined again, clearly at the bitter end of his patience at the adults talking. Owen and Beru glanced at each other, and then went to find a wall to lean the bed frame on, leaving them to it.

* * *

Second meal was just as awkward as Owen expected it to be, though Luke somehow managed to miss it, babbling on about his adventures over the last few days and absolutely demanding Ben and Cody’s attention in turns. It was decided, at some point during eating, that Owen and Ben would head out as soon as they were done eating, and Beru, Cody, and Luke would find a place to set up the second bed. This, Owen was well aware, translated to  _ Beru  _ finding a place to set up the second bed. Cody had looked increasingly strained as the meal went on, and Luke was too excited about his new friends to focus on absolutely anything else. As they left, Luke was in the process of demanding Cody tell him a story, despite Cody’s absolute insistence that he didn’t really know any to tell, as Beru looked on in the background and tried her hardest not to be visibly amused at Cody’s plight.

Beru was a terrible person sometimes. Owen loved her so much he was certain he’d die from it, one day.

As it stood, though, Owen had signed up for a mostly silent afternoon with Ben Kenobi, and the ride to Mos Eisley did not at all prove false this expectation.

It got to the point where there was even too much silence for Owen, about the time they were getting out of the speeder in the designated area and walking towards the first store. Unfortunately, there was really only one topic of conversation they could reasonably have.

“Things seem a bit tense, back there,” Owen offered, and winced even at himself. That was a terrible opener, and it was far too easy to dismiss--

“Oh, well, Cody’s still healing,” Ben said mildly, “and of course, it’s been a while since we’ve been in such close quarters.”

Like that. Owen sighed. “He’s good with Luke,” he tried again. “Already wrapped around that boy’s finger.” That, at least, got a smile and hum of agreement.

“Cody’s always been fairly good with children,” was presented as a topic of conversation. “Many of the troopers were. I don’t recall who first made the joke, but it was at one point attributed to the inherited Mandalorian need to adopt.” Owen snorted, and they walked into a store.

“...Didn’t want to be left alone with him, though,” Owen observed, because there was a time when over second meal that it hadn’t been made clear yet that Beru was staying with Luke, and Cody had frozen like he’d suddenly found himself facing down a rancor over Haroun bread.

Ben froze. “...Yes,” he agreed shortly, and waved over the proprietor of the store,

(“He’s safe?” Beru had asked Ben that very first night, and Cody had answered, “No.”)

Owen sighed, internally, and gave up on conversation.

When they found a mattress they could haggle down to a reasonable price, Owen was more relieved about it than he had been about anything in the past standard year.

* * *

“He really  _ does  _ seem to be doing better,” Beru said, with all the confidence of an afternoon observing, after the four of them had finished third meal and Luke had re-kidnapped Cody to go outside, now that the suns were beginning to go down and it was a bit cooler. Apparently, Luke wanted to show Cody things in the patch of desert he’d been living alongside for nearly a whole ten-day, despite Luke himself having only been introduced to it today.

“He’s--yes,” Ben said, and stood to begin gathering plates. It was a smooth attempt at a tactical retreat, Owen would give him that. Pity it absolutely would not work. “Much better.”

Beru stood too, began assisting with clearing the kitchen table, easy as you please. “He let Luke bully him into telling stories after all,” she continued, smiling like she hadn’t noticed Ben trying to get out of the conversation. “About adventures during the war, I believe. Certainly I remember some of the names of planets he brought up from old training modules I did as a girl.”

Ben froze. “Did he,” he said, slowly. “Well, it’s good that he’s begun speaking about it then. Beru, really, you needn’t help with this, you’re my guest--”

“There was a general in the stories that featured fairly prominently,” Beru pressed--interrupted--and reached over to take the plates from Ben’s hands before he could escape with them. “Do you know, I’d say he admires the man he was describing very much.” Ben said nothing. Beru nodded, and set the plates back down. “So, how  _ is  _ he doing? How are you both doing, Ben?”

“We’re fine, I assure you,” Ben said, stiffly.

“Tell me,” Beru responded, evenly, “do they teach you to swallow your hurts like this when you become a Jedi, or is it simply a particular skill of yours?”

Okay, that might be a bit far. “Beru,” Owen interjected, and she glanced over at him, eyebrows raised. Owen shook his head. “Don’t dig at the man. He doesn’t have to share with us if he doesn’t feel comfortable.” Beru hummed, and then turned her head back to Obi-Wan, mouth set in a noncommittal line.

“We can’t help if we don’t know the problems,” she pointed out, ostensibly to Owen even if she wasn’t looking at him at all.

“...I don’t know that there’s much to help,” Ben said, stiff and  _ definitely  _ uncomfortable. “The truth is, it’s a situation we must work out amongst ourselves, and even then only when Cody--” He cut himself off, shook his head. “He hasn’t seemed to want much help from me, and I can’t say I blame him. He and all his brothers--well, if I’d--” He trailed off, and then sighed. “I don’t blame him. I abandoned them all, in the end.”

Beru reached out, taking both Ben’s shoulders, and he looked down at her, blinking in surprise, and opened his mouth. “It’s funny,” Beru said, before whatever fool thing Ben wanted to say fell out of him, “how people who know and love each other so well can hurt each other so deeply without saying much at all.”

This was officially a conversion Owen did not need--or, to be honest,  _ want _ \--to be a part of. He stood up, and gathered the plates. “I’ll clean up,” he said, keeping his eyes studiously on the pile of cutlery and dirty dishes. “And then I suppose we’d best get going, Beru.”

“Oh--no, it’s getting late,” Ben said, glancing out the window at the gathering dusk. “Stay the night, please. We have a second bed now, and my back can handle one more sleep in the chair.”

Beru smiled at him, and didn’t even bother looking at Owen. Owen internally sighed. Sometimes, it was a royal pain to be family with Ben Kenobi. “We’d love to,” Beru said.

* * *

It was Owen who finished cleaning up, like he said he would, as Beru sat Ben down and hauled some hurt out of him like pulling teeth. He passed them in the living room as he finished, squeezing her shoulder as he went, and felt his lips pull into a smile at the absent squeeze to his wrist she gave him as he continued on to get the other two in.

“--not much left of the story to tell,” Cody’s voice said, drifting through the door.

“You can’t just stop telling a story,” Luke’s voice insisted, and Owen peeked his head out to see Cody sitting on the porch with Luke tucked into his side, both of them with their shoes off and in the sand as the world darkened around them. There was an old blaster rifle next to Cody’s free hand, so at least  _ one  _ member of this household wasn’t an idiot. “You gotta go all the way to the end!”

Cody sighed. “Alright. So remember the bad guy?”

“Yeah,” Luke said, like this was a dumb question, and Owen bit down on the inside of his mouth so he wouldn’t chuckle out loud.

“Right. So he--” Cody paused. “He had an ability nobody knew about, where he could put all the soldiers into--a trance, I guess.”

“A trance?”

Owen, who’d been about to walk out the door, froze, and took a very careful step back inside. Why, he thought, despairing, was everyone in such a talking mood this evening?

“It made it so  _ all  _ of the soldiers had to listen to him,” Cody continued, quietly. “And since he was a bad guy, and he wanted the soldier’s General dead, he told the soldier to kill his General.” Owen could hear the capitalization on the word  _ General _ , like it was a name instead of a military rank.

“Bet he didn’t,” Luke said, with the faith of the young.

“He tried,” Cody said, and his voice was flat, like the tops of the dunes spreading endlessly to the horizon Owen could make out beyond them, in the growing dark.

“...You’re sad again,” Luke informed him, head turning to look at Cody with that sharp and hazy look Owen’s child got when he knew things he shouldn’t have known.

“This part of the story is sad,” Cody said, voice still low, pulled out of him like venom from a snake bite. “The soldier didn’t kill his General, but he tried, and he couldn’t take it back after he’d done it.”

“Was his general mad?” Luke asked. “It was the bad guy’s fault!”

Cody turned to look at the kid pressed to his side, head now in profile as well, and tried to smile.

“He understood that the soldier hadn’t wanted to,” he said. “But he didn’t really want to be the soldier’s General anymore, afterwards.”

Luke tilted his head, as though trying to process this. “That sounds dumb,” he declared. The laugh Cody gave sounded startled out of him.

“So  _ then  _ what happened?”

“Oh,” Cody said, voice going vague. “They teamed up and defeated the bad guy, obviously.”

Luke frowned at him, like he thought Cody was holding out on him. “But  _ how _ ,” he asked, impatient.

That was his cue if Owen had ever heard it. He stepped out into the open. “Luke,” he called. “Come on in now. We’re bedding down here tonight.”

“ _ Really _ ?” Luke asked, immediately enthusiastic, and jumped to his feet with  _ far  _ more energy than he should have, as the suns finally sunk all the way beneath the horizon.

“Really,” Owen said, and couldn’t help but grin. “Go on in and interrupt your Aunt. I think Mr. Kenobi could use the escape.”

“No need,” said Ben behind him, and Owen  _ very nearly died of a heart attack on the spot _ as the silent old fool stepped out onto the porch. “I managed to escape without the assist. A particular skill of mine; I’m very wily.” Anything Owen might have said to that was immediately interrupted by Luke rocketing past him to body slam Ben in the legs. “Oof. Luke, you must stop doing that, you’re going to concuss yourself.”

“Nuh-uh,” Luke informed him, cheerfully.

“A remarkable argument,” Ben responded, gravely. “I find myself completely unable to rebut. Would you like to come and choose some night clothes?”

“Okay,” Luke responded, bouncing in place, and Owen just… gave up having any control of this situation.

Ben turned and began herding Owen’s child into the house, but paused, glanced over his shoulder at the soldier still sitting out in the night, feet buried in the cooling sand. “Will you be coming in soon, Cody?” he asked, voice very careful not to have an opinion one way or the other.

“...In a little while,” Cody responded, and the silence stretching out afterwards was once again somehow echoing with the honorific he might have used, last time Owen was here. Ben nodded, slowly, and then let the impatient toddler haul him back on mission, and disappeared inside.

The silence stretched. “...Has he  _ always  _ been that quiet?” Owen exploded, unable to contain it anymore.

Cody...let his shoulders relax, and snorted, apparently amused at Owen’s pain. “ _ Always _ ,” he said, in the tone of a man who had suffered for many years.

“It’s infuriating,” Owen voiced.

“He has no idea he does it,” Cody informed him, and there was maybe the ghost of a smile on his face. “He almost got blasted by accident  _ so many times _ , sneaking up on us, and he was  _ always _ surprised.”

“Great,” Owen said, and reached up to rub at his temples with one hand. “Don’t stay out here too long, or you’ll attract attention. The Jundland Wastes are not quiet at night, no matter  _ what  _ that old fool might have told you.”

“I’ll come in soon,” Cody said, and gestured to the old blaster next to him, and so Owen left him to his thoughts. How Owen had managed to become family with these two, he didn’t know.

* * *

Ben didn’t actually sleep in the chair, in the end, from what Owen could gather. He went into the kitchen instead, and when Owen got up as the suns rose and detangled himself from the clinging burr that was his child--reattaching him to Beru so they’d both stay asleep for a moment longer--he found him cross-legged in a corner, eyes closed and back perfectly straight, apparently meditating.

He opened his eyes and nodded when Owen walked in, and then stood up like it was nothing and began puttering around to make caff and tea.

First meal was had, Luke was pried, tearfully, from Ben’s legs with promises that he could return to visit again soon, the rock was ceremoniously placed on a shelf where anyone walking in would see it.

Then Owen, Beru, and Luke went home.

“I’m worried about them,” Beru mused, turning to watch the hut disappear as they crested a dune.

“What else is new,” Owen grumbled, shaking his head. “It’s a damn miracle Ben’s still breathing out there, at this stage.”

“Oh, stop,” Beru said, rolling her eyes, but she was smiling again, so Owen took it as a win. “Well, anyway, I think Ben, at least, managed to get it through his head that he needed to  _ talk  _ to Cody, rather than marinating in his guilt a bit more.”

“I’m not holding my breath,” Owen told her, and turned to take the long way around a rock formation--there’d been some Tuskens up there the other day, best to be careful.

“Pessimist,” Beru said, fondly. “They’ll be fine. Luke agrees with me, right Luke?”

“Yeah!” Luke said, not even looking up from where he was fiddling with something he’d picked up from the ground before they left. He wasn’t paying attention at all, but he wasn’t upset, or rattled, just distracted by his new treasure.

“Oh?” Owen called back, amused, and Luke looked up. “You think Mr. Kenobi and Cody will be alright? Even though they’re sad?”

Luke blinked, like Owen had said something really dumb. “They’re best friends,” he said, slowly. “They just need to say sorry to each other.” He tilted his head. “Maybe they can give each other a ‘pology picture about why they’re sorry. And a hug. I got lots of paper and chalk for the pictures. They can share!” He went back to his--that was probably a bone of some sort. Owen very pointedly decided to deal with that later.

“See?” Beru said, and her shoulders actually did ease a bit. “Luke’s never wrong about how people feel. They’ll be fine. They just need to give each other apology pictures.”

Owen sighed. “They’ll be fine,” he agreed with her, because she was right. If Luke wasn’t worried, then they probably, in the end, would be fine.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me and my WIP snippets on tumblr @adiduck! :)


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